Once upon a time, a very wise and
loving father looked upon how his children were behaving, and saw
that something must be done to teach them the right way to live. They
were unruly and selfish, constantly arguing with each other, filled
with greed and violence. This was not how their father wanted them to
live.
He called them together to discuss the
matter. He asked why it was they behaved in a way that was contrary
to not just what their father had taught them, but to common sense as
well. He asked what must he do, as their father, to make sure they
behaved as they should.
They replied that they were no longer
children, that they could make up their own minds about how to
behave, as long as their father made it clear what was expected of
them.
“Show us what you consider the
difference between good and evil. Make up a list of rules, and we
will follow them, to the very best of our ability.”
Their father looked at them, a subtle
smile playing on his lips. They asked for the very thing he had been
planning on doing. Everything was going according to his plan. The
father spoke, “Very well. I have just such a list right here. I
will give it to you, along with promises to reward you greatly for
abiding by the list. Be aware, though, that there is also punishment
and dire consequences for breaking the rules. If this is truly what
you want, do you swear you will abide by the list?”
He handed out the list, and the
children gathered to look at it. There was some grumbling about a few
of the rules, yet when they looked at the list of rewards, and how so
many of the rules looked so easy to follow, they eventually nodded
their heads in agreement.
“We will follow these rules. We
expect the just rewards for doing so...”
“And the just punishment for
failure?” their father interrupted them?
“Yes, of course. But we shall not
fail. We are quite able to keep these rules,” replied the eldest of
the children, a hint of indignation in his voice.
The father gazed at them sternly, yet
lovingly as well,”Very well then. From this day forward that list
will govern nearly everything in your lives. You will start following
it immediately."
He watched as his children hurriedly began discussing
how to comply with the list of rules, and took the first steps toward
what they thought would be a life of reward for their discipline and
work.
It soon became apparent that some of
the rules were harder to keep than they thought. How could they not
work on a certain day, yet still do the things needed to go about
their lives? It turned out that wasn't too hard to resolve: they simply did
extra work the other days to get ready for the day they couldn't
work. However, many of the other rules meant giving up certain things they
enjoyed, which was of course a difficult thing for some of them to do. They soon realized they didn't really miss those things that
much-some of them were harmful habits anyway-but especially because their father was generous with his rewards
when he saw them comply with the list.
What was not so easy was obeying rules
when their basic human nature, their emotions and desires, ran
counter to the rules. It was hard not to be jealous of a sibling who
had more toys. If someone was mean to me, many
of them thought, how can I be expected to treat him nice in
return? Eventually they saw how
hard it was to keep some of the rules, but rather than admit it, they
pretended they were still keeping them. Sometimes, doing this meant they had to
change the meaning of the rules to make it look like they were keeping them. In many cases, they resorted to bragging about the
rules they did keep as though that made up for breaking other
rules.
All the while,
their father watched their behavior in near silence. Occasionally he
would let them know he was not pleased with how they behaved. When
this happened, some of his children would make an effort to correct their
behavior out of genuine remorse. Others would pretend to be sorry,
but keep on breaking the rules in secret. A few of the children
simply said they were sick and tired of the rules and would do what
they wanted.
After many years,
it became obvious that the list of rules caused as many problems as
it solved. This wasn't because of the rules, but because the children
simply were not able to keep all of them as they had promised. As it
is in life, words written on paper look much easier to follow than is
the actual case. The rules can be objective, unchanging words on paper, but people are naturally subjective, and as changeable as the weather.
There were as many ways of dealing with the list as
there were children. Some kept nearly all the rules faithfully. Some
chose only those rules which were easy to keep. Some pretended to
keep rules, but didn't. Some tried as best they could, and were very
sorry when they broke a rule. Others simply said they would no longer
follow the list.
Their father
observed all of this in knowing silence. Even though some of his
children thought they were fooling him (because they thought the were
fooling their siblings), he knew what each of them was doing. Finally
he called them together to discuss the list of rules.
“So, you have
had this list for many years now,” said the father, “and I have
been watching you carefully the whole time. Some of you do very well,
considering the great number of rules on the list, and others of you shame yourselves with your selfishness
and contentiousness.”
At this, the
children became disquieted. They started grumbling among themselves
about who their father meant was doing well and who was being
selfish.
Their father continued,” and yet, no matter how well or badly any of you have
done, not a single one of you has succeeded in following the list as
you promised. As a result, none of you qualify for the ultimate
reward.”
There was a moment
of stunned silence as the children looked at each other in disbelief.
Then all at once the cacophonous protest erupted. The children
shouted at each other, at their father, at no one in particular.
Finally two of the children stepped forward, convincing the others to
let them speak.
The
first child stepped forward and got right in his father's face, “This
list is impossible to keep.
We may just be your children, but we deserve better. We deserve
something fair. You set us up, giving us this ridiculous list,
promising a reward, and now saying we don't get it because we didn't
keep all the rules?”
“How
were we ever supposed to keep this list? We know you can keep it, of
course. We may be your children, but we aren't you.
It's unfair to expect us to keep this list as you would.”
“You
claim you love us, but it's obvious to us that's not the case. You
gave us this list, knowing that as we tried to follow the rules, some
of us would act differently than others. Instead of the rules making
our lives as a family easier, it resulted in so many arguments about
the rules, how to keep them, who was or wasn't obeying, that we are worse off
than before. But you knew
that would happen! You knew it would happen but gave us the list anyway. How cruel! No real father would do such a thing. We demand you tear up the list, and give us our
rewards anyway, because this whole thing was unfair.”
For a breathless
moment, the outspoken child stood before his father, ragged breaths
coming forth as he expected some sort of reaction: an angry retort,
perhaps even a slap to the face. Instead the father gently leaned
forward, laid his hands on his child's shoulders, and kissed him on
the forehead.
The child, now
torn between an even greater anger toward his father (for not acting as the child had expected) and bewilderment
over his response, moved back toward the rest of the children in
uncertain steps, his eyes never leaving his father's unfathomable
gaze.
The second child
spoke humbly, his eyes fixed on the floor.,”Father, some of us have
tried our very best. We really have. We thought we could follow all
the rules, but we found out we couldn't. We are too flawed, to apt to
make mistakes despite our better judgment. Even the best of us can
act in selfishness. That list is... impossible to keep, as my brother
said. But the fault lies with us for not realizing this from the
start, and spending all these years trying to keep it instead of
asking you how we could deal with such an impossible list. Forgive us
for being so arrogant.”
Finally
he looked up into his father's eyes. He lunged forward onto his knees
and grasped his father's hand in his own, “Please, father, please
tear up the list. We aren't truly able to keep it correctly, because we
don't know how... we aren't you.
No matter how highly we think of ourselves, we don't really know your
thoughts, your heart, your nature. We lack something inside of us... each of us is lacking... that's why we fail...”
The father gently
pulled his child off his knees and wrapped him in a loving embrace, a
smile on his face. He took a few moments to whisper something in the
child's ear. The child perked up greatly at the words he was hearing,
and soon a joyful grin replaced the tear streaked expression he had worn moments before.
The father stopped
speaking to the child, who reluctantly released their embrace. With a
nod, the father motioned for him to return to his siblings.
The
father stood and held the list up before him. He loudly declared, “I
will not tear up this
list. It reflects the way things are meant to be, because it comes
from my very heart. My own spirit is the spirit behind the list. I
would sooner kill myself than dismiss these rules”
Again a mixed
reaction from the children, ranging from anger and indignation to
wonderment to bitter resignation of the inevitable failure the list
imposed upon them.
The father lowered
his voice to a whisper that cut through his children's muttering as
clearly as if he had been speaking in a silent room, “I have a much
better solution. I agree the list is impossible to keep fully. That
was my intent from the beginning...”
More indignant
muttering.
“That being the
case, “the father continued, unfazed by the growing discontent
among some of his children, “I offer the only solution what will
work. I offer myself, my spirit.”
With that, the
father took a deep breath, an impossibly long and enormous inhalation
that seemed to draw all of time and space into himself, leaving
nothing but a spot of light in which he stood before his family. He
then exhaled, his breath like gentle fire washing out over his
children like the tide flowing in to erase footprints in the sand and
remove detritus. Some of the children closed their eyes and inhaled
the breath of their father. Others obstinately shut their mouths and
refused to breathe.
Yet none could
deny that the fire had washed over them, and that as a result, the
entire universe had changed.
The father looked
out over his children, loving the most rebellious and selfish as much
as he loved the most loving and faithful. “That is all I have to say for
now.” With that, the father turned and posted the list of rules on
the wall, where his children would always see it. The children looked
at each other, with mutterings both benign and hateful, and
eventually went their various ways.
All but one.
The lone child
meekly approached her father, who had sat back down in his chair and
was idly humming to himself, eyes closed. “Father?” the child
asked. The father opened his eyes and smiled.
“I knew you
would be the one” he said happily, and held out his arms for his
child to approach. He pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms
around her as she leaned her head on his shoulder. She listened to
his humming for a few moments, and found it filled her with peace and
joy. After a few blissful moments listening to her father's song, she
spoke:
“This was the
plan all along, wasn't it? I mean, from the moment you gave us life,
you knew what we would be like. You knew that no matter what, if you
didn't do something drastic, we would become nothing more than
selfish, unmitigated brats. At least compared to you, that is. I
mean, we can be really good when we want to, but it's not quite
enough to be that sort of good, is it? That's because that sort of
good is only on the outside, only temporary, and often only because
it means we get a reward for being that sort of good.”
She paused for a
moment, expecting her father to say something, but he simply
continued to hum the quiet song, his head leaning against hers, his
eyes closed.
“I
guess what I'm saying is there are two sorts of good we can be.
There's 'list of rules' good, where we can point to one or a bunch of
the rules and say See, I'm being good because I keep these
rules. But then we forget about
the rules we don't keep, as though it doesn't matter when we are bad.
And the fact is that for a lot of us, the most important rules are
the ones we break, because they're the hardest for us to keep. Like
loving our enemies or not fighting over stuff, or being more willing
to give to someone than get something from them.”
“Then
we make a big deal out of keeping the easy rules cuz we hope that
will keep people from noticing that we're breaking the ones that
matter the most. And that's why you said we had to keep all
the rules to earn the reward, cuz if we could say that we kept some
of the rules, but not all of them, and that we deserved the reward as
a result, we would miss the whole point of what the reward is.”
At that the father
stopped humming and opened his eyes to regard his child.
“Cuz, well, we
spent all this time trying to keep the list of rules, thinking the
reward would be some great thing each of us wanted, like a lot of
money or a big house or to be better looking or to be in charge. But
those sorts of things are only the rewards you get by breaking some of the rules. I mean,
anyone can get that stuff on their own, really, often just by being
selfish enough to make themselves more important than anyone else.”
The child looked
up into her father's eyes.
“The
list, the list is meant for us to realize that the only way we can
really keep it is if we have you inside of us, if we share your
spirit, like you gave us just now. That's how we keep the list: not
by following each and every rule, but by letting your spirit guide us
into becoming like you, and acting as you would act. That way we know more than
just what's on the list. We know why
there is a list to begin with. And when we know that, when we know
that the list is really all about love, then we can keep the parts we
are best able to keep, each of us, personally, and not fret over the
parts we don't keep because we realize it's not our fault if we make
mistakes for being imperfect. It's only our fault if we know we could
do something but refuse to do it.”
“So
the reward is not something we get from keeping the list. It is
the list, or more so, it's your spirit inside of us, gently making it so we can let the you inside of us keep the parts of the list it's important for each of us to keep,
ourselves, without fretting whether someone else is keeping the list
the same way. The reward is knowing why, and knowing you, and moments
just like this.” Then she closed her eyes and hugged her father
ever so tightly.
The father smiled,
closed his eyes, and resumed humming his sweet, soft song.
